It's time for a rant. I received a letter from the Parole Board today inviting me to comment on proposals to allow victims to attend life sentence prisoners' Parole Board hearings, and to present a statement concerning the impact the crime has had on them. They are already permitted to submit a written statement. I appreciate that it may be difficult to carry many with you with me on this one, but please hear me out.

The life sentence has two elements - a tariff (minimum term before parole is possible) which is set to reflect the requirements of retribution and deterrence. Once this term has been served the prisoner is entitled to be released if he or she can demonstrate that the risk of causing serious harm to the public in future is no more than minimal. Like it or not, this is the law. In setting the tariff the trial Judge considers the severity of the offence and the harm that it has caused to the direct victims, and society as a whole. To re-visit the impact of the offence on the victim for a post tariff lifer can only constitute a re-sentencing exercise, since it can have no bearing whatsoever on issues of risk. I don't make the rules. I try to work within them, but it increasingly seems that the Government are (to use a few tired old metaphors) pushing boundaries, moving the goal posts and generally taking the piss out of the law.

Since the Parole Board cannot legally take into account the views of the victims in deciding whether a life sentence prisoner can be released from prison, allowing them to be there is at best dishonest, giving them the false impression that they are playing a part in the process. At worst, the Parole Board will be swayed by the victim's views, and we may as well allow a panel of News of the World readers to decide who gets to walk the streets.

What concerns me is that there has been a shift, ironically, under new labour, from prison being about rehabilitation to purely about punishment. In my view it should be about both. If you consider the situation from a purely economic position, what is the sense in spending millions of pounds of tax payers money keeping offenders in prison if no attempts are made to change these people. The prison gate becomes a revolving door, and everyone loses.

And, to borrow a line from Forest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.